Contenu du sommaire : Psychanalyse, l'autre matérialisme

The Frankfurt School and Freudo-Marxism: on the plurality of articulations between psychoanalysis and social theory
Psychoanalysis is central to the «critical theory» of the Frankfurt School, a feature it shares with «Freudo-Marxism». The articulation between Marx and Freud can however take on various meanings. Starting from the programme of Horkheimer and Fromm in the 1930s, the article shows how the articulation went through two contrasting developments, testifying to two distinct conceptions of history. We can thus distinguish between the position of Fromm who, repudiating the theory of drives, was to become a «revisionist», drawing on psychoanalysis as a component in a theory of socialization, and an antithetical position, in line with the use of psychoanalysis which Adorno shares with Benjamin, and to which Horkheimer would subscribe, where the radicality of Freud constitutes the critical principle through which is revealed the social processes of reification, thus subverting the materialist framework. Evidence of this opposition can be found in the neo-revisionist quarrel (between Marcuse and Fromm) and, to a certain extent, in Habermas and Honneth, whose work shows a certain continuity with that of Fromm.

The psychiatrist, the nurse, the insane, psychoanalysis: for a popular history of psychoanalysis 2
In opposition to the revisionism characterizing contemporary psychoanalysis, this article pursues our investigation aimed at foregrounding the constituent elements of a popular history of psychoanalysis. In the aftermath of the 1939-45 war, there emerged, throughout Europe, a series of enterprises which sought to reappraise the issue of madness, with the result that a host of new practical approaches saw the day. These were, to begin with, the initiatives of psychiatrists, who in many cases were psychoanalysts. Having been active in the resistance, and drawing on their experience as political activists, sometimes as Marxists, they continued their struggle in the immediate aftermath of the war, explicitly formulating as their goal the destruction of the alienating structures of the psychiatric hospital. Our intention is thus to focus on the French psychiatrico-psychanalytical context of the 1950s, in the period prior to the contribution of Félix Guattari from the beginning of the 1960s and the seminal perspectives he opened up, through which to rethink a revolutionary praxis.

The instance of the letter and the last instance
In the 1960s and 70s, first Lacan and then Althusser invoked the category of instance, in a way which would mark what is today called the «structuralist moment» of French philosophy, profoundly influencing the discourse of those who were the disciples of both. The complex system of references to action, demand, insistence, effectivity, decision, hierarchy, which found themselves combined in the notion, proves difficult to translate into other languages, and in particular into English (which has today become the paramount language of critical theory). In order to achieve a syncretism of three heritages (Marx, Freud, Saussure), the French theorists drew on the polysemic extension of the word «instance», which while it does exist in English, operates differently. Hence the interest in examining the divergent choices made by the English and American translators, reading them as symptoms of certain tensions and of a logical instability which affect, from within, the «structuralist» paradigm à la française.

A scientia sexualis to confront the fascist mystique
The article proposes a rereading of Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism in counterpoint to the Foucaldian historicization of the «repressive hypothesis». It tests another hypothesis, according to which fascism not only represented one of the first objects of a Freudo-Marxist synthesis, but in effect overdetermined its formulation, causing it to take on (at the risk of breaking with the postulates of psychoanalysis and of Marxism) a dimension of excess analogous to that which it posited in the case of fascism, identifying it as the factor accounting for the latter's traction on the «masses». In the case of Reich, this would involve the idea of a «natural sexuality» or of an «orgasmic economy», to be turned back against a nazi biologism. It would also imply, in the case of Georges Bataille, writing at the same time, the idea of a «heterology» combining the lessons of the Freudian Massenpsychologie and those of the sociology of the sacred stemming from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss, which could thus be turned against the fascist mysticism.

The (post)colonial condition between Marxism and psychanalysis: from Europe between the wars to 1950
Having emerged in Mitteleuropa, only at a later phase would psychoanalysis encounter the colonial question. Indeed it is in the texts of applied psychoanalysis written by Ernest Jones that we can locate the first applications of Freudian theory, in an analysis of the Irish question. This particular analysis would, by extension, come to operate as a more general point of view regarding the civilizing function of British imperialism, influencing a figure such as Owen Berkeley-Hill, co-founder of the Indian Society of Psychoanalysis. It was slightly later, between the 20s and the 40s of the last century, that a convergence between psychoanalysis and Marxism would emerge within the French surrealist movement, subsequently acquiring a new momentum during the 40s, when André Breton, Michel Leiris and other representative figures of the surrealist movement moved to Central America and to Antilles, and with the emergence of « negritude » around Aimé and Suzanne Césaire. The article aims to describe the main features of the geo-history of the meeting between psychoanalysis and Marxism, in the years preceding the publication of what can be considered as the really seminal works to emerge from such a connection, Psychology of the colonization by Octave Mannoni (1950) and the writings of Frantz Fanon.

Dialecticizing sex: materialist and psychoanalytic reworking in the approaches to gender
Starting from a reading of Shulamith Firestone's ground-breaking book, The Dialectic of Sex, the article questions the dialectical approach used in certain gender theories which reevaluate both psychoanalysis and Engels and Marx's materialism. The very notion of the dialectical – which can have different meanings – enables us to address the sexual question by way of the socio-historical production of gender-oriented discourses and practices, in articulation with the psychosexual basis of this production. The dialectical approach, the thrust of which is critical and revolutionary, must however undergo a conceptual rephrasing of their psychoanalytical and Marxist formulation, in particular regarding the relations between biology, class and sex, with a view to deciphering the gendered bias latent in their unconscious and ideological conceptualization. The inherited theoretical framework, proper to Marxism and to psychoanalysis, is thus tested in the confrontation with the historical specificity of the articulation between the social relations of sex, class, and race, thus leading to the elaboration of a materialistic approach to psychoanalysis.

The know-how of analysis: construction or recognition?
To take as the object of one's inquiry the analyst's «know-how» is an indication that, while psychoanalysis is indeed a theory, it remains essential to the understanding of its status and of the effects produced by it outside its specific field that it be addressed in terms of its actual, clinical working out. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how psychoanalysis manifests a practical orientation, thus situating it in what is a strategic position for any politics aimed at the opening of the space of conflict by effecting a change in its coordinates, instead of the attempted erasure of the latter, or the attempt to introduce an instance of moderation or justice into the specific cases of conflict. Insofar as its clinic takes precedence over an anthropology, to the point where it can ultimately do without the latter, psychoanalysis enables us to reconsider the relations between the masses and ordinary singularities, thus envisaging a politics without an anthropology.

The political projects of the common in southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain). Civic practices and the restructuring of the political field
The article examines the current reemergence of movements addressing the question of «common goods», or «commons», or the «common». It points out that while numerous initiatives and inquiries relative to this issue focus on the economic and juridical conditions of the sustainability of shared resources that are subject to the reflexive organization of a community of users, those projects which have been developed in southern Europe enable us to apprehend the notion of the «common» more in terms of a collective practice of self-institution and self-government. Among these, the article considers cases of collective self-management in Greece, elements of the beni comuni movement in Italy, and certain elements in the renewal of the political in Catalonia. It concludes by noting that the political implications of these initiatives are primarily in terms of the «relativization of the State», through the development of capacities of economic and political organization which are autonomous, a fortiori when developed inside the very institutions of the State.

Philosophy after Marx
Marx does not abandon philosophy. He gives it a radically new configuration, through the repatriation within the immanence of the historical community of the foundation which metaphysics had hypostatized in the transcendence of a demiurge, and through the consequent reworking of ontology as a transcendental science of production. Such a re-foundation obliges us to acknowledge that all that had seemed to be given to men is in reality produced by them, while at the same time forcing the admission that the theoretical production of the philosopher is itself a function of the social relations proper to the philosopher's community. Marx thus overcomes not only the naivety which Husserl had reproached the philosopher with, he also overcomes the jejune emptiness of philosophy, obliging it both to invest the entire social field, as the underlying support-structure of its theoretical elaborations, and to critic its social position and the specific mode of subjectification which it has induced. It is for this reason that philosophy after Marx can no longer be carried out as before, being henceforth haunted by the suspicion of ideology.

On the return of Marx in philosophy and politics. Some elements for a bibliographical inventory
A significant renewal in Marxian studies is currently evident in France. A first manifestation is to be found in the translation of the classical texts of Marx within the framework of the GEME, as with the 1859 A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy, or the edition of texts which have been taken up a new, in the light of philological discoveries, as in the case of The German Ideology. At stake is the reemergence of the much-debated question of the philosophy of Marx, or of philosophy according to Marx, or after Marx. The previous great debate in France on the question, dating back to the 1960s and 70s, has thus been revived, through the simultaneous publication of two unpublished texts by Louis Althusser, which had been intended as an introduction to Marxist philosophy, and the publication by Lucien Sève, who was Althusser's antagonist, of his truly monumental and doctrinal treatise entitled Et la philosophie? To these studies by classical Marx scholars can be added the contributions of a new generation of researchers, among whom we may mention Emmanuel Renault and Franck Fischbach. At some distance from the constricting grids of historical and dialectical materialism, their work presents us with an inventory of the various options available, thus defining the terms of a new departure, whether by way of a reading of the plurality of interpretations in a pragmatist orientation (Renault), or through the reformulation of Marx's problematic and categories in terms of a new social philosophy (Fischbach). Evidence of the renewal is also to be found in the revived interest in the politics of Marx (I.Garo, J.N. Ducange).

On the political history of communism, between the national and the global
The article addresses the historiographical debate on communism in France and Italy from the 1970s until today. The author examines the relations between the history of communism and politico-ideological debate in the two countries, highlighting the different methodological approaches. It also notes the importance of the relation between history and politics, the vitality of which tends to fade in the most recent works on the subject, where the weight of ideological debate is weaker. In recent research on the history of communism, the method of a «crossed history» has assumed considerable importance. Such an approach has been adopted in order to apprehend the history of communism by situating specific national traits within an international context, thus opening up new perspectives for the comprehension of one of the most notable phenomena of the 20th century.

Two conceptions of history in revolution: Barnave and Babeuf
The article compares two readings, proposed by two figures of the Revolution, Babeuf and Barnave, of the revolutionary process inaugurated in 1789. The two readings have in common their presentation of the revolutionary crisis as a paroxysm in the confrontation between two opposing social groups. While the analysis offered by Barnave, the moderate, comprises features it shares with the Marxist conception of class struggle, that of Babeuf, the radical egalitarian, is not without interest, for anyone seeking to retrace the genealogy of the «socialist» conceptions of history.

The event in history: The Commune, May 68
Following the publication in France of her latest work L'imaginaire de la commune by the Éditions la Fabrique en 2015, (Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune, Verso), Kristin Ross here spells out the theoretical and political issues at the heart of her research. The interview gives her the opportunity to present the way she goes about her work, those who have influenced her (H. Lefebvre, J. Rancière), and her presuppositions. It emphasizes the degree to which her reading of history, whether of May 68, the Paris Commune, or of the 1960s, breaks with the dominant, reactionary and determinist narratives, while also pointing to the fact that it is in rupture with those progressive narratives which, very often, constitute the nourishment of the militant imaginary. Her work thus represents a project undertaken at some distance from the question of the State, that is not amenable to didactic approaches, to strategic visions, or to the cult of great men, and which is attuned to the gestures and words of emancipation and to the experimental and inventive dimensions of a politics.